How are historical artefacts looked after in the Third World? It’s true that they don’t get destroyed but very often they’re left to rot in sparse, run-down museums with flickering lights that nobody visits. On what many Third World Museums are like 🧵
Moving past the question of ‘should they be returned?’, many Westerners and Diaspora Groups agitating for returns have an skewed idea of what the Third World museums these artefacts would be returned to are actually like. They are not the same kind of museum you find in the west
For one, the general condition of the museums; these are often in small or underutilised buildings and are empty, sparsely decorated and badly labelled. The displays are frequently poor and uninformative. The museums are often grimy and not well-maintained, have flickering lights
Having had the opportunity to visit lots of these places, the other thing you notice is the lack of local visitors. You will be in a national museum and there will be nobody there, locals seemingly uninterested. It would be fair to say a museum-going culture doesn’t really exist
I don’t think this is just a product of the British stealing their artefacts or being poor. My experience is a culture of ‘inquisitiveness’ doesn’t really exist in many of these places. I remember actively trying to find a bookshop in Addis Ababa and only being able to find one
The general disrepair and emptiness, the lack of locals - it’s not obvious that many people in these countries actually care that much. Their diasporas might for identity-forming reasons but my impression is that artefacts returned to the Third World would be infrequently visited
It’s true that museums in Asia are generally better than in Africa and that there is a lot of variation in quality depending on where you are. But these same rules generally apply, just to a lesser extent. Eg. The National Museum in Delhi, India I remember being disappointed with
To stress again, there are lots of good Third World Museums - A lot of S. America’s pre-Columbian museums are very good, MENA museums like Tunisia’s Bardo, Qatar’s Islamic, Cairo’s Egyptian Museum (organisationally a mess inside but a lot to see). But IMO general rule still holds
Though - even in places that do preserve heritage, you see a lot of botched restoration work. China is infamous for this, in the Silk Road countries for instance there are lots of slap-dash cement job restorations. Some restoration work is well done but a lot of it is very shoddy
In all, a British-Nigerian or African-American living in the west might suddenly become passionate about getting an Ife Head returned to Nigeria but if it does get returned it’s unlikely to be visited or looked after as well. Maybe beside the point for activists, but the reality
To add, my other impression is that the diaspora groups care more about pushing for these kinds of returns than the people in the actual countries themselves - but YMMV
AMERICAN MEDICAL STUDENT IN HAITI DESCRIBES WORKING WITH HAITIANS - A Thread 🧵
Haitians have been making the news yet again - A Short Thread once more re-sharing the Infamous Blog Post of a Medical Student’s Experience in Haiti about ‘How Haitians Think’ 🇭🇹
It has proven hard for me to appreciate exactly how confused the Haitians are about some things. Gail, our program director, explained that she has a lot of trouble with her Haitian office staff because they don't understand the concept of sorting numerically. Not just "they don't want to do it" or "it never occurred to them", but after months and months of attempted explanation they don't understand that sorting alphabetically or numerically is even a thing. Not only has this messed up her office work, but it makes dealing with the Haitian bureaucracy - harrowing at the best of times - positively unbearable.
Gail told the story of the time she asked a city office for some paperwork regarding Doctors Without Borders. The local official took out a drawer full of paperwork and looked through every single paper individually to see if it was the one she wanted. Then he started looking for the next drawer. After five hours, the official finally said that the paper wasn't in his office.
Dynamic here of Somalilander takeover of… Liverpool City Council is not just as simple as migration creating a bizarroworld new ‘Somali’ lobby in the home city of The Beatles - the Somaliland lobby here represents the interests of a specific Somali clan; the Isaaq Clan. You may see major cities fall under the control of different Somali clans - Cities with large settlements of different clans may have very strong reactions to ‘the city of Liverpool recognising Somaliland Indepence’. Hawiye or Darod clan controlled cities opposed to an independent Somaliland vindictively making fun of the Hillsborough disaster as an attack on Isaaq controlled Liverpool, Britain devolved into a patchwork of warring regional powers like during the Heptarchy or the Hellenic Classical Age, Japan’s Sengoku Jidai period etc. except everyone is Somalian
For example in the comments this man who is from the Awdal region so probably from the Dir clan has a strong reaction to the prospect of Somaliland becoming more recognised. His pinned tweet decries those who support Somaliland as his enemy. He says:
1) Retard Somalilanders Liverpool’s council is just a city council it doesn’t mean anything 2) Calls them the word ‘Heego’ - which is used to described some perceived ‘enemies of Somalia’
DID YOU KNOW? The Dominican Republic actually celebrates its independence from Haiti, not Spain. In 1822 Haitians under the command of Mulatto President Jean-Pierre Boyer marched into and occupied the ethnic Latin east of Hispaniola - the Black Colonial Occupation lasted 22 Years
The occupation was supported by the Dominican Republic’s black population and mostly opposed by its mixed and white population. On arriving in the east, the Haitians immediately set about expropriating property from whites - and there was crop failure, looting and a lack of enforcement of laws. When the heavily outnumbered Dominicans finally took up arms against the Haitians after the death of Boyer they decisively won every major battle
More ‘Forgotten Haiti’ - The Failed African American Resettlement Initiative
Goodbye Rishi Sunak. Once described as “The Prime Minister you could most imagine playing Mario Kart with”, in another Britain with no Immigration Crisis he could have been a fairly endearing novelty PM - but we don’t live in that Britain